"It's a good tip considering I just walked around the corner," Leal said, dismissing reporters' questions about serving Strauss-Kahn. "I'm just doing my job."

Actually, that's not a good tip. It's about 10%. Leal is rationalizing and refraining from bad-mouthing the rich man. And, by the way, the place may be huge and well-located, but — see the pictures at the link — it's in pretty bad taste. Aptly bad taste. Feh.

Yeah, I'm sure the guy is used to $5 or maybe $10 tips for the same service. Unless he has to make a second trip or something, why tip based on dollar amount?Anyway, I find it odd when I order something for take-out and they hand me a credit card slip with the "Tip" line. Do I tip someone for ringing me up? Do I put a zero? Do I leave it blank? My solution is usually to hand it to the wife.

US taxpayers should take a good long look at how the New World Order led by Barack Obama spends its money.

What's amazing is that this rapist already is lining up favorable reporting in the media to support his claim that the maid had it coming.

Just look at Megan McArdle bespeckling herself in this painfully written attempt to provide some plausible deniability for Strauss-Kahn and to blame the innocent victim of his horrifically painful anal rape.

And why has Strauss-Kahn not been indicted for obstruction of justice yet? It's been widely reported that his lawyers have contacted family members to offer them money if the victim will recant her story?

That's felony obstruction and grounds for disbarment. And yet, the guy's lawyers are freely and openly, brazenly, attempting to obstruct justice.

It's incredible the breadth of crime that the elite Socialists and Democrats are getting away with in this country.

Tips are dependent on the customer. Customers tend to tip the same amount every time, regardless of the order.

Sometimes the tips are larger on really large orders, but not always. I delivered a 150 dollar order to a girls' soccer team and got 4 bucks.

Conversely, I've delivered a single pizza and gotten 10. It's totally up to the customer.

I stopped worrying about tips. I just do the job right and let tips take care of themselves. People don't tip more for good delivery service. They will tip less for bad service, but there's no way to get people to tip more than they've already decided.

On a side note, the absolute worst tippers are professionals, like doctors and lawyers. They're also the rudest. The best tippers are bartenders and hairdressers, and anyone who works for tips. Really rich people are often good tippers as well.

"It's a good tip considering I just walked around the corner," Leal said, dismissing reporters' questions about serving Strauss-Kahn. "I'm just doing my job."

Strauss-Kahn is probably too stupid to even realize that his piss-poor tip led directly to the delivery-boy calling attention to the receipt to the press and thus, outing his location again (which, I'm sure will lead to his removal from the premises shortly).

The hypocrisy of the entitled rich, aka: limousine liberals. Class warfare contributed to the French revolution. Apparently that bit of history is lost on the current socialist entitlement drones who treat the rest of us like house slaves on the old plantation.

I often wonder how the rich and the poor entitlement addicts can look at themselves in the mirror without gagging. But then I remember they have no conscience, shame, morality. They do have situational ethics that are based on the false god of moral equivalence.

They are a cancer on the exceptionalism of our great country and are morally bankrupt. One of the more telling results of this immorality is our prison population.

The article itself is named "plausible deniability" and here's what Megan McArdle wrote:

"I travel a lot, and I've had housekeepers walk in on me in various states of undress, especially in hotels with turndown service ..."

Now, first, this is complete bullshit. She's lying through her teeth. This can only happen if you WANT it to happen because every hotel Megan McArdle has stayed in has a lock preventing anyone from the outside from entering without her express permission.

What she is doing is setting the stage to blame the victim of Strauss-Kahn's rape.

Then, she writes:

"I'm sure it could happen to a male traveler perfectly innocently." See, she's already used the word innocent.

Ahh, now we see how it's really the maid's fault that she's in a room with the naked Strauss-Kahn. He's completely innocent.

McArdle can't come right out and blame the maid, but the gist of what she's trying to do is pretty obvious. It's transparently attacking the victim and attempting to provide "plausible deniability" for Strauss-Kahn.

But wait, it gets better: Strauss-Kahn was right to be angry with the maid, according to McArdle!

McArdle:"If it happened to you you'd be humiliated and enraged ..."

See how it works? Why, you might be so humiliated and enraged, so out of your head, that you might just act on that humiliation and rage. Totally in self-defense, mind you. And you could hardly be blamed, since it's not your fault.

McArdle:"Don't get me wrong; rich guys get away with stuff they shouldn't. But that's not the whole story."

Wow.

Tell us Megan. What's the "whole story." This isn't really a rape-rape is it Megan?

Because I thought the whole story was about how a very rich man raped a helpless maid. But apparently, that's not the whole story.

It's sickening what McArdle is doing in this article. It's transparently justifying Strauss-Kahn's rape of this lowly maid.

I've eaten twice at that restaurant (Landmarc). It is expensive, but it is very very good. (My last meal there was among the cheaper selections they offer...a cheeseburger with a side salad and a pint of draft beer. I think it came to something between $20-30.)

I've eaten twice at that restaurant (Landmarc). It is expensive, but it is very very good. (My last meal there was among the cheaper selections they offer...a cheeseburger with a side salad and a pint of draft beer. I think it came to something between $20-30.)

*WOW* It’s good to see the resident Stalinist is a man of the people, just like his comrades…$20-$30 for a cheeseburger, a salad, and a pint of beer. I’m a Right Wing Death Beast, War-Mongering Neo-Con Who Oppresses the “Other” (Womyn, Gays, Lesbians, the Transgendered, People of Colour and the Poor) and I and my Life Partner seldom spend more than $30 on the WHOLE meal for two! I guess worrying about the “Other” and seeking social justice for them and justice against the War Criminals pays well….

Seriously Bob, do you not see a difference between accusations of "letting your robe fall open" with a defense of "I didn't know the maid was in the room" as opposed to raping a woman? Is there anything McArdle has written anywhere that would lead you to conclude that she would defend DSK's alleged behavior? Your reading is so strained as to be ridiculous.

The real test of a man's character is not how much he tips the delivery boy, but how much he tips the maid....The maid can go through the judical process. I don't think the trial is even scheduled until September. During that time every untoward fact about her will be revealed. Then, presuming that he is found guilty after a legnthy appeal process, she can sue him for damages. I presume this will also be subject to a lengthy appeal process. Or she can walk away tomorrow with a few million dollars. See how it plays out.

"Is there anything McArdle has written anywhere that would lead you to conclude that she would defend DSK's alleged behavior?"

Yes, this:

"Don't get me wrong; rich guys get away with stuff they shouldn't. But that's not the whole story."

Like Whoopie before her, McArdle is suggesting, slyly without saying it outright so she can have plausible deniability, that this really isn't a rape-rape. That there's "more to the story." That Strauss-Kahn has "plausible deniability" and that the maid is somehow responsible for the rape by being in that room in the first place, and that DSK was right to be angry and humiliated by maid - enough even to act on that humiliation and anger.

Come on, it doesn't take much of a strained reading to see the groundwork McArdle is laying for her friend.

Keep in mind that Megan McArdle is a Socialist and former employee of the World Bank, so it's hardly surprising to see her defending her friend and Socialist colleague the rapist.

nevadabob, you're fundamentally misreading McArdle. She's explaining that harassing hotel customers create and use plausible deniability--that they exploit the fact that inadvertent exposure can happen innocently--to make their illegitimate, unacceptable harassment harder to identify and deal with. There's no issue of "blaming the victim", or "excusing the offender", just a discussion of the difficulties that exist when you set out to properly defending the victim and dealing with the offender.

McArdle seems to proceed from the assumption that DSK is guilty, but that in a free society, we can't and shouldn't proceed with the "presumption of guilt" that would be necessary to get every harasser every time.

You're getting worse Bob. She's not talking about DSK. She's talking about exhibitionist behavior or boors, and the possibility that such behavior is, in fact innocent. She is decidedly NOT taking about raping maids when they enter a room, regardless of the circumstances. I feel pretty confident that McArdle is anti rape.

And McArdle a socialist? I don't think that word means what you think it means, to borrow a phrase.

And McArdle a socialist? I don't think that word means what you think it means, to borrow a phrase.

I get the impression Bob's entire point is based on failing to look up a phrase he's intuitively misunderstood. Reading back over his comments, it looks like he read "plausible deniability, and thought "hey! She's saying his denial is plausible!"

The delivery guy said it's a good tip. You say it's not. I suggest you send him an extra $20 ;)That place looks like a lavish fuck-pad. You can tell by the leopard skin bed spread and the safety headboard.

You tip based on bringing the stuff. $5 would have been adequate for an average delivery. If there were a lot of bags you tip more. I am guessing that meal was way over priced so he probably did not carry that much.

Having worked for tips myself, I do not stiff people if a tip is warranted. I typically do 20% of the gross of a restaurant receipt if the service was good, and occasionally even more if exceptional. If not so good I go 15%, excluding the tax. I rarely do less even for bad service unless the service is surley (that has only happened once or twice), figuring they had a bad day.

If I am getting take away, however, I do not leave a tip. That is when I go and pick it up.

DaveW, most people qualify for bail. You are presumed innocent. The bail is for flight risk. He has addressed that by turning over his passport, submitting to house arrest and guards (at his own cost).

What happens is you probably could not meet these financial conditions. Then again, I dobut you have ever been accused of raping a hotel chambermaid either.

Lincoln: CC slips are printed the same by the POS software or CC processing box, regardless of the context.

It doesn't know or care that you're picking it up rather than paying after a meal.

Tip appropriately (which in context might well be zero, I suppose - though my impression is that especially in NYC one is expected to tip something for the cashier's time in taking and fulfilling the order).

As an artist, Ann's fascinating, both for what she "sees" and for what she doesn't. Namely, there are *some* similarities between DSK's lodgings and that awful place Ann and Meade vacationed in a while back.

Who cares WHY you ate there, obviously the resident Stalinist makes good money…I see you and your comrades, can afford to dine well…well I would have expected you and the Collective to have dined modestly, at a place that is a co-op with an employee profit-sharing program. But INSTEAD, you’re dining extravagantly, so it seems. So you are a PART-TIME socialist, with a high-paying CAPITALIST job, or does your company really, really “care” and you all just make good money?-the usual excuse.

So YES it does count where you eat, when you care about the workers and the like….that’s what’s so funny about the “Socialist” DSK flying 1st Class and staying in a $3,000 a night Sofitel, whilst making about $496,000 per year at the IMF. You guys seem to have no problem with YOUR lifestyle being good, you just seem to worry that MINE’S somehow unjust…again I guess as long as you “care” and are willing to spend someone else’s money to provide “Social Justice” then it doesn’t make much difference how much lobster, filet, or champagne you consume.

Dinner over, I remember the host's wife lingering at the table-for-six as everyone else in the party was leaving. Her husband, the host, had placed the tip partially under his dessert plate, about half of which she then picked up as discreetly as she could and stuffed into her designer handbag.

I've always wondered if those two weren't actually in cahoots. That he makes a show of flashing a generous tip, and she lingers to cut it down to 10%.

Miss Manners once had a guide for tips (covering everything from restaurants to casino dealers) that had pizza deliveries down for $1 per pie. Most places these days, that's less than 10 percent, and it doesn't go up if you get surf and turf on it.

He's under guarded house arrest, being watched by the same people who watched Madoff. That should be sufficient to negate his flight risk, to negate any risk to anybody not actually on the premises, and minimize the danger to anyone working on the premises.

Given that he actually hasn't been convicted of anything (yet) and that this way he is financially responsible for his food/housing/clothing/watchers instead of the State of New York, it seems to be reasonable enough to me.

Oh, I agree, Ann, about the banal barrenness of it all, just wanted to bestir you to rise to the bait and go into some detail while at the same time gently ribbing an "academic" on the "academic" lifestyle (not that there's anything wrong w. that :) ) I rather thought the defects you cite might be the cause of your contempt/displeasure--as they certainly were mine also--just wanted to be sure. :)